Ponce de Leon’s Discovery Timeline:

Search continues for elusive Bimini

The fleet had departed the island of La Vieja on July 25 to continue the search for the elusive island of Bimini, sailing amongst very low lying Lucayan islands (today’s Bahamas Islands and the Turks and Caicos Islands). Shortly thereafter, they found themselves in shallow and confined waters without a clear and safe route for proceeding. Ponce sent a ship’s boat to reconnoiter one of the islands that the old Taino woman they had found on La Vieja told them was called Bahama. Here Ponce and his men ran into another Spanish ship from Española. A ship under the command of a Spanish pilot named Diego Miruelo.

As discussed in the February 17th submittal of this column, Diego Miruelo has been credited by the Spanish chronicler Garcilaso de la Vega with the original discovery of the Florida peninsula. Previous to 1513, Miruelo and other Spanish pilots had raided the Lucayan Islands for Taino Indians whom they enslaved and took back to Española where they were sold and placed in mines and on the ranches and farms of Spanish settlers. According to Garcilaso de la Vega, it was during one of these slaving ventures that Miruelo was blown to the north by a storm and discovered a previously unknown land that Ponce would name La Florida in 1513.

This was no doubt a most disquieting turn of events for Juan Ponce. He was likely cognizant of the fact that Diego Miruelo had been the first discoverer of Florida. Furthermore, Miruelo was very probably in the employ of Ponce’s rival, Diego Columbus, the eldest son and heir of Christopher Columbus and in 1513, the governor of the New World. Competing with Ponce, Diego Columbus had attempted to get the royal contract to look for Bimini and discover to the north nominating his uncle, Bartholomew Columbus, for the job. The King had declined preferring to support Juan Ponce.

Would Diego Columbus make an attempt to claim Florida by virtue of retaining in his employ Florida’s original and unauthorized discover? Would Miruelo claim he had visited all the places that Ponce had found nullifying Ponce’s claims and making a fool of him? These and other thoughts may well have been going through Ponce’s mind as he contemplated this unexpected and unwelcome encounter with Miruelo.

The relationship between Diego Columbus and Ponce de León can be characterized as antagonistic. Juan Ponce was a faithful retainer of King Ferdinand of Spain while Diego Columbus struggled against the king to assert what he believed were his rights in the New World by virtue of its discovery by his father Christopher Columbus. The fight for control of Puerto Rico was the center of the ill will between the two rivals.

Ponce had been the first to initiate Spanish colonial expansion from the island of Española in 1506 when he established a mining colony on Puerto Rico before the arrival of Diego Columbus. After his arrival in the New World in 1509, Diego Columbus named political officials and sent some 150 Spanish settlers from Española to Puerto Rico to wrest control of it from Ponce. The King had responded by appointing Ponce governor of Puerto Rico and when Diego Columbus’s officials refused to acknowledge him as such, Ponce had them arrested and sent to Spain. Diego had retaliated by confiscating Ponce’s properties in Higüey on Española and initiating a lawsuit against the King in the Spanish courts. These had found in Diego Columbus’s favor on a number of counts, including that of appointing political officials. This turn of events had set the stage for Ponce’s 1513 voyage. The rivalry and power struggle with Diego Columbus had cost Ponce dearly. In particular, it had cost him control of the settlement of the island of Puerto Rico, his greatest undertaking to date. Now, Ponce may well have considered, it was going to cost him this new venture as well. Thoughts such as these were probably uppermost in Ponce’s mind 500 years ago today.